


We'll Make It Right For You

by coffeeincluded



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Hubert von Vestra being an Idiot, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Torture, Insurrection of the Seven, Nightmares, Or more accurately needs to work through some things, Panic Attacks, Post-Black Eagles Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, they're gonna be okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:07:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23997250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeeincluded/pseuds/coffeeincluded
Summary: Hanneman: Feel free to ignore me. I know full well I have my own blind spots. It's just... I believe your father had something he was trying to protect. Bearing a stain on his honor, being purged by his own son... All in the name of protection. I speak from knowledge, as someone who failed to protect something I held dear.Hubert: Let's say you're right. Suppose he did it to protect something he cared about. Doesn't matter. Doesn't change his actions or my judgement of them. My father was a traitor to House Hresvelg and he deserved what he got. That was me protecting something I care about.--From Hubert and Hanneman's B support.Hubert didn't understand, nor did he care. Until Bernadetta snuck into his life, planted roots into his heart, and Hubert found himself devoted to others besides Edelgard.And then he understood. And though he still hated and condemned his father, it terrified him.
Relationships: Bernadetta von Varley/Hubert von Vestra, Edelgard von Hresvelg/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 11
Kudos: 87
Collections: Hubernie Week





	We'll Make It Right For You

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Hubernie Week because I love the ship and many other people writing for it! Specifically, the Day 2 prompt: Fear. This was a blast to write. 
> 
> Anyway, please read and enjoy and let me know what you think if you want to! And check out everyone else’s Hubernie Week stuff too!

The coffee was poisoned. 

It was a clever little poison, very nearly odorless and tasteless, the tiny trace of bitterness easily masked by the full-bodied brew. Hubert would know, for he used this same poison to dispose of his traitorous wretch of a father. 

Hubert looked down, and the cup on his desk was empty. The papers strewn across the dark wood of the desk swam before his eyes. There was a framed drawing on the desk, something scribbled. Hadn’t he drawn that, long ago, when he thought his father still cared?

Hubert looked up, and saw himself. 

The younger man before him was so _young_ , so blindingly certain of the way of the world, and so revoltingly naive. 

“—traitorous swine, sullying the Vestra name, betraying our own emperor!” the Hubert before him hissed and did he always sound like that? Such a neophyte in the ways of intimidation, resigning himself to supposed ugliness instead of learning to work with what he had been born with. He was still talking, that one visible green eye narrowed in rage. “How dare you. _How dare you?”_

The poison was swift, but its effects were horrific. Hubert gasped for air that might as well have been water for all his body struggled against it, writhed in agony, voided his bladder and bowels. And he deserved no less for betraying Lady Edelgard, for stripping her of her power and turning her and her family over to the wolves, for betraying Lady Edelgard—

A new pain, sharp and cold, bloomed in Hubert’s chest. He looked down at the lance running him through, icy dark magic coating the steel to further tear him apart from the inside. Hubert looked up at his killer, and a single gray eye glared back. 

His daughter, now grown, trembled in rage, curly dark hair falling over a face twisted in hatred. “How could you do such a thing?!”

How could he do such a thing? How could he betray Lady Edelgard? He could only do it if his heart were split, if he were forced to choose. 

_Everything I do, I do for you._ Hubert wasn’t sure if his daughter heard what he had to say. But it didn’t matter, because Belladonna wasn’t listening. Why would she? He didn’t want to hear whatever his wretch of his father had had to say either, because no excuse would ever explain away the depth of his treachery. 

But she knew her mother, his dear Bernadetta, had nothing to do with this, right? Murder him, but leave her alone!

Belladonna leaned right up against his face and shoved the lance in deeper. “I will make things right, and history will not even know you existed. Now do something right and _die.”_

Hubert’s daughter yanked out the lance, and watched as he bled out onto his desk. 

Just as a traitor deserved. 

He couldn’t be prouder of her.

* * *

Hubert did not catapult awake the way he once did, but the incantation for Miasma, that old friend which he apparently could literally cast in his sleep, was half-formed on his lips before his brain fully registered where he was. 

He was in his bed, in his room, in his home. There were two other people. His wife, Bernadetta, curled up with her hand laid across his arm in sleep. And their young daughter, Belladonna, was blissfully asleep in the trundle bed just inches from Bernadetta’s side. 

A nightmare. It was just a particularly disturbing nightmare. Belladonna was all of three years old, and although any child of his would be unquestionably brilliant, that was still too young to begin magic instruction, much less wield a lance. And betraying Edelgard? Unthinkable. Absolutely unthinkable. 

_But Hubert,_ the darkest parts of his mind whispered, curling up in the night, _didn’t your father once think the same thing?_

Hubert shook away those thoughts. Oh, if only he could take a scalpel to his brain and cut away such blasphemy! Edelgard never lusted for power but rather had it forced upon her. She would never do what her father had done. The wars were over; they had _won_ . They had overthrown the church that strangled and smothered all of Fodlan, and dragged Those Who Slithered in the Dark out into the light to put them down like the beasts they were. They had won, and they would _live._ Five years later and it was still something Hubert was getting used to, that he would get the chance to live, and grow old, to let a beard grow in and watch it slowly gray. That he would reluctantly fall in love and share his life with Bernadetta, watch her blossom and bloom. He and Lady Edelgard and the rest of their flock of eagles would restore their empire, usher in a more equitable age, then step aside and enjoy the new nation they made. He and Lady Edelgard shared the same vision, and walked the same path. 

But his devotion and heart were no longer hers alone. They belonged to two others now. No, three, Hubert mentally amended as he trailed a magic-scarred hand down Bernadetta’s side until it came to rest on the smooth expanse of her abdomen. She was so warm, even through her nightgown. Her abdomen rose and fell with her breath, and though neither could yet see it, their second child grew within. 

He didn’t have nightmares like this when Bernadetta was pregnant with Bella, but that was because they didn’t _know._

Flames, what had he done? Falling in love with Bernadetta was dangerous enough, but she at least walked the same path as him, traveling the far reaches of the empire by herself, taking to the shadows in her own way to destroy those monsters in the dark. And, as much as he loved Bernadetta, as much as she loved him, as much as he would do anything for her, they both knew without saying that Lady Edelgard was one of those uncrossable lines (or, at least, that was how it started. Now, he could no longer say the same). 

And then Belladonna was born. The first time Hubert saw their daughter, a red-faced, squalling, glorified potato in Bernadetta’s tired arms, something in him broke. 

“You’re so lucky,” Hubert had said to the bundle in his arms as both his wife and daughter slept. “You’re so lucky, that you’re going to grow up in this world your mother and I helped make for you. We fought and we bled for it and you will _never_ know what it was like before, or what your mother and I endured. Bella, you’re going to grow up beautiful and brilliant and loved, and you’ll inherit this world we made for you and you’ll blow us all away.”

And if anybody or anything would do harm to his daughter, or his wife for that matter, he would destroy them. It didn’t matter what, or whom. 

_Even Her Majesty?_

_No! Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!_

“Hubert?”

Bernadetta also snapped awake with absolutely no lag between the two states of consciousness, for she too spent a lifetime honing her senses to danger. She leaned over to kiss his forehead, and Hubert felt his racing heart slow and calm as she ran her hand through his hair. “Hu, I heard you moaning. Is everything okay?”

There was no shame in bad dreams; Hubert had comforted both Bernadetta and Lady Edelgard enough to know that even the strongest people could be haunted and hunted in their sleep. But admitting his own vulnerability and letting another share his burdens was something that took years of learning and was still a struggle most days. Even when he had explicitly sworn to do so in their wedding vows. “Just nightmares.”

“Sounds like a bad one.” Bernadetta hummed some old lullaby as she continued stroking his face. “Do you want to talk about it? It’s helpful for me.” 

What was Hubert supposed to say? That he had a nightmare where he betrayed his emperor just like his father had, and then their daughter killed him in retaliation just like _he_ had? 

“...I had a nightmare where I betrayed Her Majesty just like my father had, and then Belladonna killed me in retaliation just like _I_ had.”

Bernadetta went still, her eyes wide open, and for an awful moment Hubert thought she was going to start screaming. But then she took a deep shaky breath, and forced herself through the moment. “Hubert, was...was this a nightmare because Bella, um…you know...or because you betrayed Edelgard?”

And oh, that Bernadetta knew why he was so troubled without him even saying. Hubert truly was a lucky man. “The latter,” he whispered, so as not to wake their daughter. 

“Hu, you know how you always tell me to work through my worries when I start getting into a panic spiral so I can help realize they’re silly? You’re being silly right now. You’re the most loyal person I know. I can’t ever imagine you being against Edelgard.”

“I’m sure my father once thought the same way.”

“Oh...Oh, _Hubert.”_ Bernadetta climbed into his lap and peppered him with countless little kisses no on his temples, his forehead, his nose, his neatly-trimmed beard. “Hubert, is Edelgard as ambitious as her father was?”

“Her Majesty started a war to destroy the corrupt Church, and now rules all of Fodlan.”

Bernadetta swatted at the beak of his nose, then leaned in to kiss it away. “Hubert, that’s not what I meant and you know it. And are Those Who Slither In The Dark around anymore?”

“No.” They had, all of them, made _very_ sure of that. Those Who Slithered In The Dark were gone, and the few innocent Agarthans who had been trapped and rescued when those monsters decided to blow up Shambala in a last-ditch attempt to deny victory even at the cost of their own lives were set free. If monitored just in case.

“And would Edelgard ever force us into danger for her own agenda?”

“Of course not! Her entire goal was to make a world where people do not needlessly suffer for so-called tradition,” Hubert hissed. He knew where Bernadetta was going with this, because he did the exact same thing when she got into her panic spirals. Brought up the thoughts that seized him with fear and picked them apart one by one. It was...certainly something, seeing her use those tactics on him. Even still, the mere suggestion that Edelgard would do such a thing made his blood boil. 

“And they won’t. Bella will grow up knowing she can be as loud and opinionated as she wants.” Bernadetta took a deep breath, keeping herself as settled as she could. “What is it that has you so scared then? I mean, if it’s okay to ask?”

She had to know the general shape of it, and yet. “I despised, condemned, and killed my father for his treachery. I still hate him for it, even today. During the war Hanneman suggested that my father did it to protect me, a justification I immediately discarded as irrelevant. But now, if, _if,_ I were forced to make such a decision, I don’t know what I would do. Bernadetta, what does that make me?”

“...I think it makes you my husband, and Bella’s dad,” Bernadetta eventually said into the crook of his neck. Her hand had snaked under his shirt to rub his back in small soothing circles, and Hubert relaxed slightly into the needed touch. “Maybe, um, maybe it would help, to talk with Edelgard about this?”

What. “Bernadetta, you can’t possibly be serious.”

“I am! I mean, it sounds stupid it’s probably really really stupid but...no! Stop it Bernie! I am. Even when we were back in school and I couldn’t even bring myself to leave my room most days, and Edelgard was super stern and scary, she still managed to help me be less, uh, scared. Of things that scared me. And she read it too.”

Edelgard had. He had been the one to read it to her, actually, the first to see the horror on her face when the final _but why?_ was answered. Logically, Hubert knew that she would understand his nightmares and shamefully uncharacteristic behavior. And yet Hubert’s initial thought was that he would rather tear out his treacherous tongue than talk about _this_ with Lady Edelgard. 

And yet. 

Hadn’t he once promised to share everything? Under Her Majesty’s direct orders, yes, but still. 

“I will try.”

* * *

The Insurrection of the Seven was a soft coup led by the ministers of the empire in response to Emperor Ionius’s attempts to consolidate power. In the aftermath, the Hresvelg children were sacrificed to Those Who Slither In The Dark, with only Edelgard surviving the experience (and, in a way, she didn’t. The person Edelgard could have grown up to be died down there in the dark as well). 

But then, why would Marquis Vestra join the coup? He was the emperor’s personal aid and retainer, the Minister of the Imperial Household, sworn to loyalty since birth just like his family before him. There was nobody closer to the Hresvelgs in all of Adrestia. The Vestras held no land or territory. They did not lord over thousands upon thousands of people like the other ministers. If the emperor consolidated power, then his closest confidant and right-hand man would undoubtedly benefit. So then why would Marquis Vestra not merely participate in the Insurrection but help Duke Aegir _start_ it? 

Unless there was something far more important at stake. 

There was more to the story. 

Not that Hubert particularly cared. As he said to Hanneman when the old professor first intimated that his father turned traitor to protect him, it didn’t matter. The old Marquis Vestra turned on his emperor, took Edelgard away from Hubert and her family, and then let them all be experimented on, tortured, and murdered. Hubert made him pay; that was _him_ protecting that which he held dear. 

They’d found the rest of the story anyway, stashed away in a forgotten filing cabinet deep in Shambala, because where else would it be. 

Like pretty much every wretched noble of his generation, Emperor Ionius was an arrogant and self-aggrandizing man, with no real interest in a legacy or much beyond enjoying the perks of being Emperor. So when a group of mysterious mages and researchers promised him and his offspring power beyond his wildest dreams, Emperor Ionius was all too willing to accept. 

Until he saw just what happened to the Ordelias, and the truth of what he had agreed to. But the devil’s bargain had been struck, and Those Who Slithered In The Dark demanded their tribute. 

Fortunately, there was another group of noble children in the Empire, Crested and Crestless, who would serve as suitable substitutes until they honed the process enough to be reasonably sure that the Hresvelg children would survive. 

“Our friends,” Lady Edelgard had said with growing horror, wide eyes locked with Hubert’s as they read through the seized texts in her chambers. “Ferdinand, Linhardt, Caspar and his siblings, Bernadetta…”

“...And me.” Oh, why hadn’t Hubert known? Even at the age of ten, he would have gladly offered himself up on that sacrificial altar, if it would have meant sparing Lady Edelgard. 

But the idea of those monsters experimenting on his friends—Linhardt, Caspar, Ferdinand, his dear Bernadetta—filled Hubert with a rage not unlike the one that burned when he learned just what had happened to Her Majesty in the months that he frantically searched for her. And the thought of them taking his _daughter_ , six months old and already so observant of the world around her, and torturing a second crest into her, made that rage burn even brighter. 

And that was when Hubert truly understood why, when his father found out just what the emperor had planned for a ten year old Hubert still practicing a basic Fire spell and all the other noble children, he went to Duke Aegir and officially started the Insurrection. How years of service and sacrifice and loyalty and duty, even to a power-hungry fool, meant _nothing_ if his son would be the price. 

In the end, Emperor Ionius lost all but his title, and Lady Edelgard’s brothers and sisters died screaming. 

Hubert had hated, still hated, his father for that treachery, for trading the lives of Lady Edelgard and her siblings for him.

But he also realized, with a growing horror, that if it was him and Bella, or Bernadetta, or _both_ , he might do the same thing. 

And what did that make him?

“I think it makes you human,” Lady Edelgard said over coffee and tea. “A good husband, and a good father.”

“Please, you flatter me. Unlike the world of espionage, I hardly know what I am doing as a husband or father most days. And besides, Bernadetta’s so-called father also participated in the Insurrection.”

“That’s because he saw me as his meal ticket and too valuable to let die!” Bernadetta shouted from the other edge of the garden, where she watched Belladonna and Geraldine play. 

There had been young children in Shambala. Not many, but they were there. Hubert didn’t know if they were born there or kidnapped—probably the latter—but even if they had been abducted there was no way the Argathans would have left their birth parents alive. And the Agarthans were all too willing to let those children die when defeat was inevitable, bringing Shambala down on their heads. So Lady Edelgard and Byleth—Empress Byleth, now—had adopted one of those children. Hubert had been shamefully suspicious at first, but Geraldine was just a child. A perfectly normal four year old child, albeit with a possible budding talent for dark magic. And now she was chasing Belladonna around the garden while Bernadetta fretted over them and tried not to let her anxiety overwhelm her. 

Byleth took a sip of her own tea. “To be fair, Hubert, I was perfectly okay with you threatening me, but if you threatened Geraldine I probably would kill you on the spot. And I didn’t tell my father because he _definitely_ would have killed you on the spot.”

“Wait, you threatened Byleth?”

Uh. That had...not been one of his brighter ideas. “It was when I was young and foolish, Lady Edelgard. I was still a neophyte in the world of intimidation and subtle influence, especially compared to now.”

“Yes, but what about in the cathedral during the war?” Byleth teased. 

“And you threatened her again?” Lady Edelgard’s voice was muffled from where her face was buried in the palm of her hand. “Hubert, what did we talk about?”

“The second time was different, Lady Edelgard.”

“It really was,” Byleth added, quickly stepping in to reassure her. “The war was winding down, and we...didn’t know what would happen to me. If there would even be a me afterwards. Hubert said that, if I turned dangerous, or into a beast like Rhea, that he would...end my torment.”

“Well, then. Thank you for not killing my dear Byleth,” Edelgard murmured, leaning in for a kiss from her wife. Hubert wanted to melt into a puddle of embarrassment or vanish in some other fashion. And this was what Bernadetta used to feel like all the time, and still felt like some days. 

“In all seriousness, Hubert,” Edelgard added once she broke away from the kiss, Byleth hiding her smile and faint blush into her cup of tea, “I am honestly glad that you’ve built a life outside me. That’s honestly something that I’ve wanted for you for a long time. I've known you most of your life, Hubert. You’re the kind of man who’s devoted to service, whether for others or a greater cause.”

That was true. “I wish I had another life to give, so there would be no risk of conflict.”

“Hubert, you’re not getting it. I want you to have a life outside me. I would neither expect nor desire you to follow me if I became an arrogant greedy fool, or if I asked you to sacrifice your family.”

“You know,” Byleth mused. “Even after Rhea betrayed my father’s trust by using me as a vessel for Sothis, his response was to take me and run for it. I don’t think your father would have gone straight to insurrection; it was probably a long time coming.”

“Or maybe he realized that insurrection was the only option with a reasonable chance of success.” He couldn’t help it; every time he tried to talk reason the dark voice in his head kept dragging him back. This time instead of planning and calculating it seemed determined to whisper the worst case scenarios when they no longer needed to be immediately addressed. Even when they made _absolutely no sense._ The entire driving force of Edelgard’s revolution was a desire to see a world where nobody would ever suffer the way she and her family and so many others had again, a world without the baseless arbitrary cruelty of the Crest-caste system. And yet for some reason his mind kept whispering that it was a mistake to let others into his life so thoroughly as Bernadetta and now Belladonna had. It was incredibly frustrating. 

Once more, Lady Edelgard sighed. “Hubert. Look at Bernadetta.”

It took Hubert a moment, because Bernadetta was busy chasing Belladonna and Geraldine around the garden in an impromptu game of tag. She looked so...happy. 

“We may be shaped by our parents, but we don’t have to be them,” Lady Edelgard continued. “Wasn’t that the point of our revolution, Hubert? Breaking a thousand-year cycle of oppression and abuse for the sake of the future?”

A future that none of them would live to see flourish, but one that he and Lady Edelgard would now live to see sprout those first few leaves. Linhardt and Hanneman‘s breakthroughs couldn’t restore every stolen year to Her Majesty, but they gave back enough. 

Hubert felt a little more at ease, even though the question wasn’t quite answered. What if this uncertainty was something he just had to live with and get used to? That he would have to split his one life among so many people.

“Mommy! Mommymommymommy!”

Geraldine’s voice interrupted his thoughts and any chance of a conversation. Just like her mother, she was the kind of person who was absolutely undeterred from getting what she wanted, which at the moment was Lady Edelgard’s attention.

“What is it, Geraldine?” she asked, her face soft and peaceful in a way that she had never been in all those years under the control of the Agarthans, in a way Hubert felt so lucky to see once more.

“Can you make Uncle Hubert teach me dark magic? He keeps saying I’m too young, but you and momma both say I’m gonna be really good at it! So why not start now so I have more time to train and can be even better?”

“You make a persuasive point, Geraldine. I can’t possibly imagine where you could have learned such rhetorical skills,” he said with a teasing look to Lady Edelgard and Empress Byleth. “How about we make a little agreement. If you perform well in your etiquette lessons, I shall speak with your mothers about starting Reason tutoring.”

“And you say you’re bad with children,” Byleth teased as Geraldine ran off in joy.

* * *

“Really? We’re having this conversation now?” To tell the truth, Bernie would have rather spent the rest of the night curled up in Hubert’s warm chest, luxuriating in the soft afterglow as they slowly drifted off to sleep, even her omnipresent anxiety temporarily quelled. But this was something that Hubert really needed to talk about, she could tell from the slightly distant tone in her request. Ah, why did Hubert’s mind always have to wander, even when he was so relaxed and satisfied?

“We can have it tomorrow,” Hubert mumbled, one hand idly running though her mussed-up curls. She’d stopped straightening her hair a couple years back, and had been pleasantly surprised to learn that, with the right weather and enough of Dorothea’s products, she had natural ringlets. 

“No, no it’s really fine.” For all that Hubert devoted himself to others, he was quite terrible at expressing his feelings in words. Or anything other than gifts or acts of service. “But I’m not getting up from your chest because you’re so nice and warm so I hope you’re okay with talking like that? I mean, as long as you’re okay with it…”

“Of course I’m okay with it,” Hubert said with a soft kiss to her forehead. “I love you, Bernadetta. I love you and Belladonna so much, and that is the problem. I devoted my life to Lady Edelgard long ago. But now, even though I have but one life to give, I find myself devoting it to you and Belladonna as well. Despite speaking with you and Byleth and Lady Edelgard, I still find myself frightened at the possibility of having to choose between you, or having Belladonna despise me for such a choice. And this fear persists even though I know such a scenario is highly improbable at best.” He turned over so Bernadetta could see his smile, close enough that she could count the individual strands of gray starting to creep from his temples. “Ah Bernadetta, if this is the kind of mental torment that you must endure on a near-constant basis, then you are even more resilient than I already give you credit for.”

Even a few years ago, Bernadetta would have thought that Hubert was playing some sort of awful mean joke on her with those words. But now, she could believe them. “Hu? I...I think it’s okay to have really complicated feelings about all this. I mean, I honestly really have no idea what I’m doing. It’s not exactly like I had great parents growing up. I know I want Bella and her brother or sister,” her hand slipped down to her belly, still flat but she knew how it would change in the next few months, less scary now that she had survived one pregnancy. She didn’t want to toss around names just yet, but Larkspur sounded nice, “to grow up with all the love I never had, but I don’t really know _how_ to do that.”

“I think you’re doing an admirable job.”

Bernadetta blushed into Hubert’s shoulder with some wordless noise of happiness. Focus, Bernie! She was going somewhere with this. “So are you, Hubert. And, I mean, I don’t exactly have much to go on about how to be a good wife. I mean, an actually good one who can stand alongside you and help you, not just a smiling puppet who...agh, stop it Bernie!” She shook away the thoughts, knowing what lay underneath if she kept tugging that thread of thought. “What I meant to say is, I hate my father too, I’m not just afraid of him. He was a monster and I’m glad he’s gone. But my feelings towards my mother are more...well, they’re more complicated.”

“What do you mean?” Hubert’s hand still moved in soothing strokes along the small of her back, gently encouraging her to continue. 

This was really hard. Her feelings towards her father were easy. Simple. Fear and hatred. But with her mother, she’d only begun to pick at that thorny tangle and didn’t even have names for much of what she felt yet. But she needed to try anyway. “I know my mom loves me and cares about me, in her own way. She smuggled me to the academy and even though I was completely convinced I was going to die it ended up being the best thing to ever happen to me in my entire life. And I do have a couple good memories of my mother. Like her teaching me to read, or identify plants. But I have way more good memories of my uncle. He was a better parent to me than either of my parents. Because my mother also spent a lot of time in the capital, and didn’t bring me with her. I don’t know if she had other more important things to do, or if she was trying to get as far away from my father as possible, but she didn’t protect me when she could have, or the way she could have. And I still care about my mother, but there’s...there’s a hurt there that I don’t think will ever go away.”

Hubert was still silent, waiting for her to finish. “I...don’t really know where I was going for this. Sorry. But...but it’s perfectly normal to have a lot of different feelings about a lot of different people! And Edelgard really wants you to have a life outside of her, not just revolving around one person, you know?”

Hubert was quiet for a very long time, long enough that the old fears started bubbling to the surface again. Did she say something wrong? Had she offended Hubert in some unknown way? Had she—

“I made all sorts of plans and contingencies for my work to outlive me, but I never made any plans for _myself_. This is morbid—”

“—Hu, you can make ordering Brigidian takeout sound morbid.”

“Heh. True. Still, I never really expected to survive the war. I always figured that I would fall in battle defending Her Majesty, or assassinated by our enemies, and I had made peace with that. But now the war is over, and our enemies are all gone. And here I am, still breathing, with a lovely wife and a wonderful daughter and an entire lifetime ahead of me.”

“...Oh.” Sure, some part of Bernadetta had always suspected something like that, but hearing him say it out loud was something else entirely. She snuggled in closer, just to feel his warm breath tickling her hair, the rise and fall of his chest, his beating heart. “Well, I..I’m glad you’re here, Hubert. And I’m glad that I get to spend my life with you.”

Another kiss, so soft compared to the roughness of his hands. “As am I. I hope you can forgive my lack of knowledge or expertise when it comes to devoting my life in this fashion. But I suppose we can learn together. I would say something about embarrassing our predecessors, but that is not exactly a high bar to clear. 

“Just like when Ferdie taught us horseback riding. Er, the learning together part not the embarrassing our predecessors part Ferdie’s really good with horses agh I’m sorry I sound stupid—"

“Heheh. It’s okay, Bernadetta. I know what you mean.”

The question wasn’t really answered, but Hubert looked more at ease. In the end, what scared him was...not one thing, but actually a whole bunch of anxieties clumping together into a big ball of panic, and you needed to untangle them one by one. Or something. Bernie was too sleepy for good metaphors, but she knew what was going on with Hubert, at least a little. After all, she had lived that big tangled ball of fear.

But sleep was soon chased away by a knock on the door. Bernadetta had just enough time to pull herself off Hubert and hide her body under the covers when the door opened to show Belladonna padding in, dragging her stuffed pegasus plushie behind her. 

“Mommy? Daddy? There’s a monster in my room again…”

They’d started training Bella to sleep in the room besides theirs in preparation for her younger sibling’s birth, but most nights she came in worried about a monster lurking somewhere in her room. She waved a hand towards her husband. “Hubert, you’re up.”

He was way ahead of her, a robe already thrown on and tied into place as he slipped on his glasses and followed their daughter back to her room. “My, my, we certainly have a very foolish monster on our hands, don’t we? What do you say we teach them the error of their ways?”

Bella’s nervous request gave way to giggles as she led her father to her room. Bernadetta stayed under the warm covers but craned her neck to listen in. Though he would never say it Hubert in a bemused way loved this, how his sinister nature could inspire delight instead of terror.

“So, I’ve heard that a horrible monster from the eldritch darkness has decided to take up residence here,” Hubert said in his creepiest possible voice, the one that still set shivers down her spine. “If you truly are such a frightening monster, then _surely_ you’ve heard of me, and are quickly realizing just what a terrible mistake you made by invading my house, and frightening my daughter. And surely you also realize that I am being unusually generous in my offer to let you leave unharmed if you depart immediately, and that you ought to take my advice and _go._ ”

Silence. 

“That’s what I thought. Go to bed, Bella. The scariest thing in this house is your daddy, and he is very scary and loves you very much.”

Hubert would be okay. They would be okay. Bernadetta didn’t know what would happen in their future, but she was actually looking forward to finding out. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you all for reading, and I hoped you enjoyed! I've got a couple more things posted for Hubernie week, and check out what everyone else is doing as well! I really should get a twitter or work on my tumblr or something to advertise this...
> 
> Honestly, when I thought of the Insurrection headcanon here the idea for the fic dropped fully formed into my head. For those who are wondering, this is the full story of the Insurrection in my Daemon AU as well, even though this obviously isn't part of my AU.
> 
> Anyway, see you all soon, thank you, and stay safe!


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